Curiosity helps you see the world through someone else’s eyes, even if it is initially uncomfortable. One technique I often use is buying niche magazines to learn about unfamiliar topics. Simply walking into the magazine section of a bookstore offers plenty of options. For example, Modern Farmer, Model Railroader and House Beautiful are three vastly different magazines. Flipping through the stories, advertisements and imagery in each will do more to take you outside of your own world than almost any other quick and easy activity.
3 Ask Bigger Questions – Last year I was invited to deliver a talk at an event for the paint industry. It is an industry I know very little about and so it was tempting to show up, deliver my keynote and then leave. Instead, I stayed and walked around the exhibit hall asking questions. In less than 30 minutes I learned about how paint is mixed and what additives are typically used. I heard about the industry debate between all-plastic cans versus steel and the rise of computerized color matching systems. As a result my talk was far more relevant because I chose to stay and ask more questions instead of taking the easy path.
WHAT TO READ
Historical Fiction – Every great piece of historical fiction was inspired by a writer who found a story in history that was worth retelling and sharing with the world. This curiosity makes books like Erik Larson’s The Devil In The White City (about murder at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair) or Simon Winchester’s The Professor And the Madman (about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary) wonderful gateways to start thinking about the world in unexpected ways.
Curated Compilations – There are many books that bring together real life stories or essays to help you think about new and interesting topics. A collection of shorter topics and stories is sometimes far easier to use for engaging your curiosity than a longer book. For example, the This Will Make You Smarter series edited by John Brockman or any book by You Are Not So Smart founder and psychology buff David McRaney are perfect, bite-sized ways to inspire your curiosity without requiring a huge time investment.
How to Be Observant
A few years ago I was invited to a formal dinner at an event in New York. The venue was a beautiful restaurant and after our meal the waiter came around to take our dessert orders from one of two set menu options. Less than 10 minutes later, a team of six people not including our waiter came and delivered all the desserts to our large table of 30 people, getting each order perfectly right without saying a word to anyone.
As they delivered the desserts, I started to wonder how that one waiter who took our orders had managed to relay all those choices perfectly to a team of six in such as short time?
By observing, I quickly figured out the simple trick our head waiter had used. If you had picked dessert option one, he had placed a dessert spoon above your plate. And if you picked option two, he had placed the spoon to the right of your plate.
So when that team of food runners came to the table, all they needed was the “code” to decipher the spoon positioning and they would be able to deliver the desserts perfectly. That little story of food delivery is a perfect example of why observation matters.
Being more observant means training yourself to see the details that most others often miss.
Perhaps you already knew that little spoon trick, but imagine you didn’t. Simply observing it could teach you something fascinating about the little processes that we rarely pay attention to that keep the world moving along. Of course understanding how dessert is delivered will hardly change your life, but imagine that moment multiplied by a hundred or a thousand.
Learning to be more observant isn’t just about seeing the big things. Instead, it is about training yourself to pay more attention to the little things too.
By simply choosing to observe, what can you see about a situation that no one else notices?
What can that teach you about people, processes and companies that you didn’t know before?
This is the power of making observation a habit.
REAL LIFE ADVICE (3 WAYS TO BE MORE OBSERVANT TODAY)
1 Explain the World to Children – If you are lucky enough to have children in your life, one of the best ways to train yourself to use observation more frequently is to get better about explaining the world around you to children. When my kids asked me recently why construction vehicles and traffic signs are orange but cars aren’t, it forced me to think about something I would otherwise have easily ignored, even if I didn’t have the perfect answer to the question.* * In case you were wondering, they are orange because testing shows that is the color most visible from the greatest distance. And cars aren’t because people care more about picking a color they like than optimizing their car for safety by making it orange.
2 Watch Processes in Action – Every situation is filled with processes, from how school buses drop off children at their stops to how coffee shops take and make orders every morning. When you look at these interactions, you’ll notice that very little happens by accident. Pay attention and ask yourself what does a typical interaction look like? How does it differ when it involves a “regular” versus a “newbie”? Seeing these patterns in regular everyday life can help you train yourself to use this observational skill in other situations as well.
3 Don’t Be Observationally Lazy – It is easy to go through the mundane moments of life glued to your smartphone. Aside from being really good at capturing our attention, they also keep us from seeing the world around us. Rather than switching to auto-pilot to navigate daily tasks like commuting or buying groceries, train yourself to put your phone down and choose to be observant instead.
WHAT TO READ
What Every Body Is Saying by Joe Navarro – If you need to learn the art of interpreting body language or detecting lies, a former FBI agent like Joe Navarro is probably the ideal teacher. In this best-selling book from 2008, Navarro shares some of his best lessons on how to spot “tells” in body language and use them to interpret human behavior. His work on situational awareness and teaching people how to be more observant to assess people and situations for danger and comfort is a book that should be on your reading list no matter what you do. It also happens to be a perfect supporting book to teach you how to be more observant.
How to Be Fickle
Being fickle may seem like a bad thing, but that isn’t always true.
When we hear the word, we tend to think of all the negative situations where we abandon people or ideas too quickly, but there is an upside to learning how to be purposefully fickle.
Being fickle means capturing ideas without needing to fully understand or analyze them in that same moment.
On the surface, this may seem counterintuitive. After all, when you find a great idea why wouldn’t you take the time to analyze it and develop a point of view? There are certainly many situations when you do this already.
But you probably never do the opposite. A part of becoming an idea curator is saving ideas for later digestion. Of course you can always think about them when you find them, but you don’t always need to.
For example, here are three interesting stories which I recently saw and saved:
Coca-Cola decided to disconnect voicemail for all employees at its corporate headquarters in Atlanta.
Richard Branson allows Virgin staff to take as much holiday as they want.
A Trader Joe’s employee gave a gift of flowers to a flustered mom of adopted kids who was leaving the store after an embarrassing toddler meltdown because the employee herself had been adopted and she just wanted to say thanks.
When I saved each of the stories above, I didn’t make the broader connection to tie them together.